Gov't failed N'burgh, aunt says

Wednesday

Jun 29, 2011 at 2:00 AM

For two months last fall, I attended every day of my nephew David Williams' federal trial. I stood vigil outside the Manhattan courthouse, lonely even with friends and supporters standing by me. On Wednesday, I will go to the courthouse one last time when David is sentenced. In its case against the so-called Newburgh Four, the government wants my nephew to serve life in prison.

Alicia McWilliams

For two months last fall, I attended every day of my nephew David Williams' federal trial. I stood vigil outside the Manhattan courthouse, lonely even with friends and supporters standing by me. On Wednesday, I will go to the courthouse one last time when David is sentenced. In its case against the so-called Newburgh Four, the government wants my nephew to serve life in prison.

David and I have been through a lot together. Drugs, poverty, crime and disease are a constant presence in our lives. I'm proud to say I've been clean since 1992. David sold drugs to make money and went to prison for it. He got out in 2007.

The government has been indifferent to the problems in our community. David lived in Newburgh, one of the poorest cities in the state. There are few initiatives that offer counseling or training to at-risk youths. But ultimately, David and I never blamed anyone for our problems.

I have been active in my community, helping people get off drugs. David kept his younger brother, Lord, from getting into the same kind of trouble he did. David was trying to overcome his dyslexia, get his GED and raise his daughter. In those days, even if the government didn't help us very much, it wasn't exactly out to get us, either.

Until 2008, that is. That's when the government sent a paid informant to infiltrate the local mosque in Newburgh.

Posing as a rich Pakistani businessman, the informant, Shahed Hussain, tried to engage people in conversations about jihad and American foreign policy. The community didn't like him much, so eventually he began hanging out in the parking lot. Eventually, he met James Cromitie, a big-talking Newburgh resident with a history of small-time crime. At first, Hussain worked on Cromitie with free meals and stories about Americans abusing Muslims in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He tried to cajole him into agreeing to some sort of violent crime. When Cromitie was ambivalent, Hussain offered money, cars, a barbershop and more. It wasn't enough, though, and at one point, Cromitie cut ties with Hussain for months. After Cromitie was fired from Walmart, he called Hussain to take "the job." They still needed lookouts, whom the informant insisted be Muslims.

That's when David and the other two defendants, Laguerre Payen and Onta Williams, entered the picture. They were all Muslim. They also were all broke, and promised tens of thousands of dollars. Cromitie assured them that nobody would get hurt.

I sometimes wonder what would have happened if the government had never sent Hussain to Newburgh. Maybe David would have gotten into some kind of trouble again, or maybe he would have completed his GED and straightened out. Either way, he or the other men would have meant nothing to the government. And David surely never would have become a lookout in a plot to bomb a synagogue in the Bronx.

But the government did interfere with us. The costs for our family have been tremendous. Our lives have been torn apart. The government spent millions of taxpayer dollars on the informant, surveillance equipment, fake weaponry, helicopters and the trial. And the benefits? I may be biased, but I haven't met many people who can say with a straight face that our nation is safer from terrorism as a result of all this.

I also wonder, what good might those resources have done if they'd been invested in our community instead? Perhaps job training for parolees, or education for young Newburgh residents, or programs for getting guns off the street. Maybe re-entry programs for parolees with mental health problems, like Payen, who is schizophrenic. Of course, many might consider spending money on this community to be a preposterous waste. I don't agree, but I can at least understand.

What I can't understand is spending millions of dollars to set up David and the others and then put them in prison for life, which will also cost millions of dollars. Just so they can have another notch on their belt in the war on terror? Or maybe I can understand. The informant needed to keep getting paid, and the government needed a few victories.

But at what cost?

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